Can 1 Timothy be reconciled with freedom of religion?

[Lief_Erikson]

I’m not saying one should reconcile 1 Timothy with freedom of religion. I’d like to see if the ways in which one could reconcile the two make sense.

Please respond to this passage, paying particular attention to the second paragraph:

1 Timothy 1:3-11

"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work- which is by faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

“We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers- and for whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.”

It does not say in the above passage that the law is good if God uses it properly, but if “one uses it properly.” Which seems to refer to human use, for God will always use the law properly, and it says “one,” not “God.” When “the law” is spoken of in the Epistles, anyway, I can’t think of any time when it is referring to a law not to be wielded by humans, but rather to be wielded only by God.

Another couple passages I thought I’d bring up from other books of the Bible seem less obviously in rejection of freedom of religion, yet they seem to some extent to justify it.

Hebrews 10:26-27

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘the Lord will judge his people.’ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

This passage can be more easily reconciled with freedom of religion than 1 Timothy, because it refers to the Lord judging his people, and falling into the hands of the living God. This could be interpreted as punishment after death in hell, as easily as it could be interpreted as God punishing people through other people here on Earth, as well as in hell. But the way in which this seems to cast some doubt on freedom of religion is this: It says that those who reject the truth of God deserve a terrifying punishment. Whether that punishment is after death or before, the sin’s villainy is heavily underlined, and this raises the question of whether this sin should be “legal” in government laws or not.

The other passage I wanted to bring to your attention was 2 Peter 2:1-12. I’m not going to quote the whole thing here, but I’ll just quote a three verses of it (though the rest is also important):

v. 1, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them -bringing swift destruction on themselves.”

v. 9-10 “. . . the Lord knows how to rescue ungodly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority.”

Most of the examples of the unrighteous being punished before the Day of Judgment are examples of humans being punished here on Earth. The only one that deviates from that is the one of angels being punished with prisons, but they of course could not have experienced earthly punishment anyway, being spirits.

Peter goes on, “These men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish” (v. 12).

I admit that Peter and Hebrews could be interpreted as either God punishing after death or before death. However, their underlining of the sin of heresy, and their statements that such people are “like brute beasts . . . born only to be caught and destroyed,” and the claim that they will be punished before the Last Judgment, make one think about the validity of some of our modern laws.

With 1 Timothy, though, I really don’t know how one would defend freedom of religion.

 

[rwoehmke]

To interpret 1Timothy in this fashion is to do violence to the principle that all men have free will to accept or reject God’s graces. To use force of law to enforce an outward show of compliance without an inner conversion is to deny people this gift; a gift which is of course a two edge sword as it can land one in hell. The truth of freedom of religion which has always existed was clarified in Vatican II.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

How would you interpret this passage?

 

[rwoehmke]

1 Timothy is a letter written by Paul to Timothy instructing him in the handling of a Church problem. It has nothing to do with civil law. I suppose the equivalent today might be for the Pope to be instructing a Bishop on how to handle a nettlesome problem in his diocese.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

The problem with this interpretation that immediately stands out to me is that the term “teachers of the law” is never used in any other places of the New Testament to refer to anything except teachers of the Old Covenant Law. I just looked through all the references in the New Testament, and that was what I found.

There are a few references in the New Testament to people called simply “teachers,” who are Christian instructors of other Christians. “Teachers of the law,” though, is a specific term that is used in every other place in the New Testament to refer to teachers of the Old Covenant Law. So there is no reason to see the use of “teachers of the law” in 1 Timothy as meaning anything different than that.

The discussion by Paul of what the proper use of the law is, in verses 8 through 11, is there in order to correct the errors of these “teachers of the law.” Thus it is a reference to the same law these other people claim to be teachers of.

I challenge you to find any place in the scripture where “teachers of the law” means anything other than teacher of the Old Covenant Law. I just looked through all those references, so I feel confident that there aren’t any.

I don’t even know if there is any place in the New Testament where “the law” is used to refer to church community law instead of Old Covenant Law! I just looked through Galatians, Ephesians, Phillippians, 1 Timothy, Titus and Hebrews, and all the references to “the law” look to me like they’re describing the Old Covenant Law. I’m using a complete concordance, in my search, and whenever something’s meaning is unclear from it, I go directly to the passage itself to check. There are too many references to “the law” in the Letters of Corinthians and Romans for me to check all of those. I’ve already gone through forty or fifty such references in the books I mentioned.

If you can find any references to “the law,” that refer to church community regulations rather than the Old Covenant Law, I’d be very interested to see them. I find that when Paul means something other than the Old Covenant Law, he usually qualifies his term, such as when he refers to “the law of marriage,” though that too actually comes from the Old Covenant Law. Occasionally he might say that something is contrary to simply “law,” but when he uses the term “law,” in this way, not meaning the Old Covenant Law, he doesn’t say, “the law.” I haven’t found any place where the words “the law,” refer to anything other than the Old Covenant Law.

If you find any references to “the law” that refer to church community law rather than the Old Covenant Law, I’d like to see them very much. I am equally eager to see any references you might find to “teachers of the law,” which don’t mean “Teachers of the [Old Covenant] Law,” but which instead mean teachers of Christian community law. And I’m talking specifically about the term “teachers of the law,” for I know there are several references to “teachers” who teach church community law. They just aren’t referred to as “teachers of the law.”